"It is not unknown to thee, beloved, how that for many months my soul was a very hell of fear and remorse. I was blood-guilty; I knew that upon my head rested the blood of an innocent man; nay more, I knew in my inmost soul that my crime was yet more deadly--that I, even I, had condemned to an accursed death the very Son of God. Yes, I believed; but alas, it was even as the devils, who believe and tremble and yet--are devils still. I cast thee forth because thou didst also believe, I, black-hearted wretch that I was, did pronounce upon thee a curse, then my angel fled and the curse recoiled upon mine own head. I will not tell thee--I cannot--how I tried to strangle the ever-growing misery in my soul; how I flung myself, heart and strength, into the deadly persecutions against them that believed; all the while with the mean hope that the fire would drive thee back from the heavenly path which thou wast climbing into the black road down which I was plunging alone. I saw and gloried in the death of Stephen; I gloated over the agonies of them that suffered beneath the scourge; I outdid Saul of Tarsus in the work of denouncing men and women whose only crime it was to believe on God manifest in the flesh. There is a hell, for I have sojourned there.
"One day I was told that thou wast in prison; that on the morrow thou wouldst be scourged--stoned. Issachar himself told me, with an air of mock sympathy.
"'She is less to me,' I declared to him coldly, 'than the stones beneath my feet.' But I lied when I said it. That night I begged Annas on my knees to have mercy.
"'I will have mercy,' he said. 'I will send a message to the woman within the hour,' and he called Caleb. I waylaid the man, and offered him gold to show me the message; he showed it me.
"That night I went to my chamber resolved to die before the light of another day, but each time that I lifted the dagger to my breast something seemed to hold my hand. At last I flung it from me and sank upon my knees, crying aloud, 'God be merciful to me a sinner! God be merciful to me a sinner!' Again and again I repeated the words till at last there came into my soul a great peace. God was merciful--I knew, I felt it; and then and there I made confession of all my guilt before him. 'I am guilty of the blood of him whom thou didst send to save me,' I cried, 'yet he prayed in his last agony, saying, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'
"I rose up forgiven, and the morning dawned. 'I will go,' I said, 'to the place where she is to suffer, and there before them all I will make confession of my guilt and my belief; then shall I die also.'
"But when I had come to the place outside the Damascus Gate--very early, for I could not wait--I fell in with the man Ben Hesed, and because my soul was full even to overflowing, I told him all. 'I will die,' I said, 'with them.'
"'Nay,' he cried, 'rather must thou live, that thou mayest overlay the wickedness of the past with the pure gold of righteousness.'
"Thou knowest the rest, beloved."
Then the voices ceased for a space, and the sound of the falling water again filled the stillness.